


Beautifully Unfinished

by Golden_Ticket



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: And Happy Ending, Angst, F/M, Songfic, it's their story from Sochi till now, klawes, the triumphant return of the
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-15 23:22:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14151594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golden_Ticket/pseuds/Golden_Ticket
Summary: And I keep trying to figure out who you are to meBut maybe all that we were meant to beIs beautifully unfinishedTessa and Scott after Sochi. He wants her, she wants time. She gets time, he gets a new girlfriend. Ouch.Excerpt:"If she thinks of her parents and where their marriage failed, she knows Scott and her would make it work, through hell or high water. If Tessa says yes to Scott today, she’s saying yes for the rest of her life.And there it is. The reason why her chest is tight with terror and she feels like her body is building up a fever. Because she doesn't know if she wants that. Or maybe she does. She wants it, of course she does. She’s pretty sure a part of her has wanted it since she was a little girl. But therein lies the problem. She’s wanted this, wanted him, for so long, she doesn’t know if it’s real anymore. Or if it’s just conditioning and years of pining tricking her. Who is she even, if not his...his partner, his friend, his Tessa? Truthfully, she has no idea."





	Beautifully Unfinished

**Author's Note:**

> It's happening guys, I'm bringing back the songfic.  
> Massive thanks for justtotallyplatonic & tessaandscotttrash for proofreading and being general superstars.
> 
> Forever dedicated to the happy chat/business partners. You guys rock!
> 
> Based on the song "Beautifully Unfinished" by Ella Henderson.  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV6UpVT_sXo

**Beautifully Unfinished**

 

_Sunday raindrops_

_Clock goes tick, tock_

_I hate myself for staring at the phone_

_Kept all your texts, can’t erase them_

_I’d call you up but I know you’re not alone_

 

**April 10, 2015**

Sunday nights are supposed to be fun. They’re there to relax and regroup, take bubble baths and treat yourself. They’re not supposed to be spent sitting on one’s couch wrapped in a pity-blanket, wishing you had chocolate and crying to some random romantic comedy that isn’t even _that_ sad.

 

But Tessa is. She can’t really help it. It’s the fact that she has nothing to keep her mind off of things at this hour. Usually she stays busy. So, so busy. She has her sponsor deals and partnerships and her design work and her plethora of activities lined up for any minute of the week that she doesn’t spend training with Scott. Except today after brunch and training, her body demanded a break. She had come back from practice running a fever (which for once was all physical and wasn’t psychosomatic from the mess that was her and Scott and what it did to her nerves) and gone straight to the couch. But now that her body rests, her mind is in prime shape to run amok and so it does. She isn’t even really watching the movie anymore, just crying quietly and feeling miserable.

 

Outside it’s raining, doesn’t seem to ever want to quit raining, and it all feels so terribly apropos. They’d been skating to “How Will I Know” again and she never wanted to be like this, bringing her civilian woes out onto the ice, into her work place, but given the fact that she skates with the man who is the core of all her troubles, she doesn’t really see a way out. He is everywhere, touching, reaching, feeling for her because he has to, because that’s what they do and, after a really difficult back end of 2014, they’re finally back on their groove. This is good. It’s good and it’s important. They’re friends, they are a team again. And that had been a task after what had happened a year ago. She had broken his heart and then he’d gone and broken hers and then fractured and fractured it with his stupid happiness in spite of her.

 

They hadn’t been friends then for a while. Just colleagues. Business partners. In the beginning of his relationship, he had made sure she knew he was having it. He thought it was subtle but it hadn’t been: the way he lurked to see if Tessa saw when he checked the time, tilted his wrist so she saw the cutesy pic of him and _her_ as his screensaver, the way he had made Tessa meet her after barely a month, the way he would put extra effort into dropping where he was heading after practice or whatever outing they’d been scheduled to go to together. But after a while, and that was probably way worse, this acting up stopped. Instead, he seemed to settle into his new coupledom with an ease that was so very like him. He had always been happiest being someone’s boyfriend. (Well, really, he had always been happiest out on the ice with her, she knows this because that’s what it’s like for her and she just _knows_ they’re the same in that but still. Off the ice, he was just happy being there for someone, being wanted.)

 

From all that she has seen, he is a great boyfriend, maybe even a better boyfriend than skating partner because his girlfriends always seemed to get all the caring, generous, loving, supportive Scott without the nagging and moodiness and criticism and skeptical side-glances at every misstep that she gotten from him in their career. At least judging by what she had witnessed of him in his relationships. He’d always seemed so affectionate, so completely okay saying sweet things and doing sweet things and just generally being there for the girl. No false pride or apologies for being sappy.

 

Sure, it’s not an alien concept to her. He _did_ treat her like that too, especially in recent years, or at least he had before...before she had made the potentially biggest mistake of her life almost exactly a year ago. Back when she’d told him she wasn’t sure if she wanted to be with him.

 _Great times, great decisions, Tessa_ , she tells herself bitterly.

 

She hadn’t been wrong in her desire to understand herself outside of who he was to her and who she was around him, hadn’t been wrong to explore a world in which she was her own person and not just the half of a whole. But if she had known that one of the biggest things she’d come to learn about herself was that she didn’t necessarily _need_ Scott Moir but _wanted_ him with a fervor that barely seemed human, she would go back in time right then and there and change what she had said to him.

 

She wouldn’t have said: “I’m not sure if I want you”, she would have said: “I’ll be right with you, I promise. I love you, I love you, I love you, I just need a moment by myself.” But she hadn’t. And so she is here. In her white, shiny house with her beautiful furniture and nice clothes and money on the side and food in the fridge and nothing to be sad about _except…_

He’s not here. He’s with _her_. And what’s worse, he’s happy. He’s so happy sometimes it hurts to look at him. It hurts every time he pulls her in on the ice, every time she lets her head rest in the crook of his neck and breathes in his scent. He smells so good, he always has, like sandalwood aftershave and soap and detergent and like sweat when they’ve been practicing a while and she knows she should find it disgusting but all she really wants to do is crawl into him and dissolve into his body and become one with the way he smells and feels and _get a grip, Tessa Virtue_.

 

She doesn’t want to but she checks her phone again. There are no messages from him, of course there aren’t. He’s never been a great texter and right now, all his resources probably go into writing Kaitlyn back somewhat dependably. _Kaitlyn_. With her perfect hair and actual boobs and her wit and sense of humor, that ability to make Scott laugh in a way that she, that Tessa, never could. If she were to call Scott now, Kaitlyn was going to be there, listening. Unrattled.

 

Kaitlyn had never seemed rattled by her. And all of Scott’s previous girlfriends had. From Trish to Jessica to Lisa and Cassandra and whoever else he’d picked up along the way for whatever amount of time, every last one of his girlfriends had been peeved about his skating partner and it got worse the older they got. Tessa is pretty sure that nearly all of his relationships had ended because at a certain point their jealousy had driven them to tell him to choose between them and skating with Tessa and Scott had always, _always_ chosen skating. Chosen her. But Kaitlyn won’t make him choose. She’s so sure about them, she doesn’t even worry about Tessa. She pulls her into a warm hug when they meet and asks about her day and listens like she really cares when Tessa tells her. And she’s the _sweetest._

 

Maybe that’s the worst thing. That Tessa can’t even hate her in peace. Because there is nothing to hate. Kaitlyn is practically perfect in every way and kind and nurturing to boot. She is _good_ for Scott. She settles his moods, much like Tessa had before. She brings out his mature side, the caring and the planning and he’s quieter, older now, more at home with who he is. He’s in a good place now.

 

And Tessa is in her house alone and gives up on not eating chocolate, finally finding the “secret hiding spot” beyond the cookbooks in her kitchen and eats all she has left on the couch. She should be happy for him. She should be happy for herself. He has the relationship he’s been waiting to have (even if originally, he’d wanted to have it with her). And she has her freedom, her knowing who she is. And they are friends again. And skating partners. It’s all good. It’s all fine. They’re _fine._

 

But the thought that makes her stomach turn around the salted caramel Lindt she has just shoved into her mouth with a vengeance, is the one that has been stealing her sleep for months: What if this is really it? What if this is how it stays? Scott happy with Kaitlyn, Scott settling down with Kaitlyn, Scott asking Kaitlyn to marry him, Scott and Kaitlyn saying yes in the church in Ilderton (where 12-year-old Tessa had sworn she’d become a Moir one day), Scott and Kaitlyn buying a house and having children. Scott. And Kaitlyn. _And Tessa._ Watching all of that from the sidelines with a smile on her face. Because they’re friends and she just wants him to be happy. And he is happy.

 

So what if it’s forever going to be _Kaitlyn and Scott_ now? What is Tessa going to do then?

 

***

 

_I know that I should not hold on_

_So why can’t I let go_

 

**September 2, 2014**

It’s Scott’s 27th birthday and he is in Niagara with Kaitlyn. Tessa is on vacation in Alberta and on the phone with Ryan. She is neither listening to him really nor kidding herself that he is any more than a rebound guy. Once upon a time after Vancouver, they’d had a thing but that had ended due to Tessa’s severe lack of actual interest in him. Now, they had gone on a couple of dates, had a little fun but mostly she just made sure she was seen outside with him, often enough for Scott to maybe notice but so far he hadn’t said a thing about it. Not that he would. They’re not really talking much these days. She should just forget about it and move on with her life. He had, obviously. She shouldn’t hold on to him, like she said she would, like she’d wanted. But it seems that since she had learned so early to never let go of him, she has no idea how to do it now. Tough shit that _he_ doesn’t seem to have any issues with this at all.

 

It’s Scott’s birthday and he is in Niagara and she is in Alberta and they’re not talking. That’s really all there is to it.

 

***

 

_‘Cause every time I’m with you_

_Somehow I forget to breathe_

_You got me like a rag doll_

_Now I’m dancing on your string_

 

**January 16, 2015**

In two days Stars On Ice in Japan will be over. It’s almost time for Tessa’s _two days away from Scott_ that she, funnily enough, had to fight for this time. Because if it had been up to him, they would’ve gone straight from Japan to Ilderton to have dinner with his parents and Kaitlyn. This was the new normal he was trying to establish, to have Kaitlyn and have Tessa too, back as his friend the way they were before. She isn’t sure how she feels about it. On the one hand, yes, she absolutely wants to be his friend again, on the other hand every time they take the ice and he starts moving with her, spinning around her, pulling her in, she can’t breathe. She feels like a puppet on a string in his arms, like a music box ballerina dancing when he winds her up, falling back into his rhythm with an abandon that makes it hard to let go of him at the end of their skates.  

 

It’s not a bad thing necessarily either. There is a familiarity to it, a routine she can work with. They skate better together than they did in the past year and they get along. They’re actually having conversations again that go beyond skating. It’s not a bad thing. But suddenly it hurts. And lots of things have hurt Tessa in the past ten months, all of them Scott. But casting her aside or parading Kaitlyn around or even finally just being happy without her had not hurt as much as him trying to make amends. Seeing him carve out a new place for her in his life that is different from what it used to be is somehow the worst thing to have happened so far.

 

A couple of nights ago after a somewhat botched step sequence during warm-up, he’d followed her out into the hallway at the venue and apologized for being distracted. Visibly distraught, he’d told her he was fighting with Kaitlyn and it was hard because he was so far away from her and with the time difference so staggering, he couldn’t really do anything to fix it. But then, and this was new, he’d paused, tilted his head at her funny and said with an even more pained expression: “Fuck, T, I know you don’t want to hear this. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to start anything.”

 

Apparently something in her face had prompted that reaction and she struggled to reclaim her features to set them in friendly stone. This wasn’t the time or the place for honesty.

“It’s fine,” she told him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Look, I know the whole thing with her was messy when it started. It was...I was…,” he stammered, his arm flailing and landing at the back of his neck to scratch a likely imaginary itch and she waited for what he would say next. “I was trying to get back at you with her.”

Like that was such spectacular news. He looked at her as if he expected her to be shocked but she didn’t do him that favour. She’d known from the second she first heard about it, he wasn’t getting a surprise out of her for _that._

“Anyway, it’s different now,” he told her when it was clear she wouldn’t do him the favour to look shocked. “I really like her and I don’t want to mess it up.”

 

So that had resulted in Scott telling her a lot about his relationship, like a lot-lot, more than she ever wanted to know. But since she was his friend at the end of the day and it was _Scott_ , she unpacked some of the Scott-things he did that she knew from experience he had no idea could hurt people and had likely hurt Kaitlyn. She even ended up given him a play-by-play of a possible cleansing conversation to be had to get the relationship back on track. He’d thanked her after, all heartfelt and grateful, and given her a hug.

 

“You’re a champ, T,” he had said before they parted and she’d went to bed with his next words ringing in her ears. “Maybe this is how it’s supposed to be, yeah? Maybe we’re really better as friends.”

 

Right now that he is gently letting her down from a lift, pressing his face into her neck, growling and hissing a “Yes” into her ear that shoots straight down to her core, she feels his words weigh her down like a ton of bricks. He smells so amazing and touches her so surely, so desperately, it all feels so right, so meant to be. So much so that among all the recent confusion, Tessa knows only one thing for certain: They’re not _friends_.

 

***

 

_And I keep trying to figure out who you are to me_

_But maybe all that we were meant to be_

_Is beautifully unfinished_

 

**April 6, 2014**

Tessa wakes up next to Scott, in his parents’ house, in his old bedroom, on the new king-sized bed they had bought for when he visits. It’s too large for the space and in its industrial chic terribly at odds with his boys-room furniture and the old posters on the wall. His sheets are worst of all: loud indigo blue with the Leafs logo on it in glaring white. It’s kind of a joke that his Mom put it on the bed before he came home but he also pretty much loves it. She knows that because he told her before they went to sleep. They’d both been piss-drunk and he wouldn’t let her move to the guest-room as had been the original plan, so she had stayed there with him, talking and giggling until the beers they had had finally slurred their tongues and minds enough to make holding a conversation impossible and she’d fallen asleep half-draped across his chest.

 

And she’d been happy. The whole night, she’d been so happy. Celebrating at his grandparents, celebrating them and their success, and then going to the Wings game with Cara and Sheri and her boyfriend, completely immersed in Scott Moir’s world. She had fit, had always fit, since she’d been a little girl, and they treated her like one of their own, just like they always had. It’s just that now she’s woken up, there is no happiness in her, only panic. At first she doesn’t even understand why, but as she turns her body toward him, peacefully asleep and dead to the world, it dawns on her. _This_ is going to be her life now.

 

If she makes the decision she knows he’s waiting for her to make, has no doubt in his mind she will, they will finally cross that bridge they’d been standing at the edge of for the better part of the last six months (and more truthfully, possibly, for the last five years) and be a thing. Be in a real, tangible, personal relationship, farther than friendship or skating partners, more than anything she has ever had in her life. If they go down that road, that’ll be it. She knows that in her bones. Once Scott and her add real, outspoken romance to their dynamic, they will never get away from each other, ever. Because that’s just how they are. After all this time, this is the one truth she knows. If she says yes to him now, she’ll say yes to him when he asks her to marry him, she will say yes to children, however many he wants, she will say yes to the house and the garden and the dog and she’ll be a Moir not just in spirit but in name and going by their track-record, they might even make it last forever.

 

If she thinks of her parents and where their marriage failed, she knows Scott and her would make it work, through hell or high water. If Tessa says yes to Scott today, she’s saying yes for the rest of her life.

And there it is. The reason why her chest is tight with terror and she feels like her body is building up a fever. Because she doesn't know if she wants that. Or maybe she does. She wants it, of course she does. She’s pretty sure a part of her has wanted it since she was a little girl. But therein lies the problem. She’s wanted this, wanted _him_ , for so long, she doesn’t know if it’s real anymore. Or if it’s just conditioning and years of pining tricking her. Who is she even, if not _his_...his partner, his friend, his Tessa? Truthfully, she has no idea.

 

She had always been so careful not to let skating define her but somewhere along the way, she had started to define herself along the lines of _Scott._ She had grown around and into his moods like a vine, had learned to filter herself so far into him that the royal ‘we’ became her ‘me’. There is no Tessa without Scott, even if they have vastly different interests and personalities, in the last three years she had not gone longer than a week without seeing him, and even less without talking. She had molded herself into this partnership to the point that everything outside of it seemed almost unreal. And isn’t that bad? Shouldn’t she know who she is? Figure out what she wants outside of him? Despite him, maybe? Shouldn’t she be absolutely sure about spending the rest of her life with him as well? If she is faced with the start of the rest of it, shouldn’t she be absolutely sure about where she is going?

 

Into that wild mess in her head crashes Scott, with his amazing sense of timing. He stirs, scrunches his face so adorably it makes her heart skip a beat and then opens his eyes to her staring at him. He doesn’t seem particularly surprised, just smiles groggily at her before he yawns.

“Good morning,” he mumbles and stretches, and once his arms have completed a generous circle, his hand lands on her face. “So how long have you been watching me sleep?”

Tessa laughs but more because she thinks she has to.

 

He notices immediately. It’s hard to hide things from him on a regular day. With his face just inches from hers and her raw with sleep and fretting, it’s infinitely harder.

“What is it?” He asks softly and strokes his thumb across her cheek.

It feels good. It feels dangerous. It feels like if he keeps doing it, there won’t be a decision to make soon. So she plucks his hand from her face and puts it back on top of his chest. His face twists together in response and she wishes she were anywhere else right now.

“I think I’m gonna go,” she says, which at first doesn’t seem to compute with him.

“Before breakfast?” He asks. “But I thought you would…I thought you’d stay and we’d…”

The rest of his sentence falls to innuendo. He thought they _would._

 

It’s not like she had promised him or anything, it’s not like they’d talked about it, like they sat on the plane back from Russia and she’d told him: “Let’s get the media circus over with and then we’ll have sex in your childhood bedroom and start planning our future together.”

She hadn’t. But they _had_ kissed in the Olympic village after that humiliating day of stooping to silver for reasons she’ll never be able to forgive, in the quiet of an abandoned training room, and she had smiled at him when their touches started building to a crescendo they were scarcely able to break and had said “Let’s get home first.”

Now they’re home.

 

“I don’t think that’s the best idea,” she says honestly and sits up next to him.

Testament to the severity of the situation, he rises up with her, face hard in an instant. He knows something is gravely off or he would have kept lounging, as he did when he was at ease. When there was nothing to worry about. When there was no reason to.

“Tessa?” The way he says it is enough for her to understand every question he has: What is going on? Are you mad at me? Did I do something wrong? Do you not love me? Do you not love me _like that_? I thought you loved me like that? Tessa?

“I just,” she starts answering those questions and doesn’t know how. “I don’t know if it’s right.”

“What do you mean?” He asks and she has a pretty good idea that he knows exactly what she means. “Staying here?”

“No,” she replies and looks away.

“Then what?”

“Scott.”

“Tessa.” He takes her hand, she pulls it away. “Talk to me.”

But she can’t. What can she say? How can she say it? She isn’t ready for this conversation.

 

“I won’t let you go until you tell me, you know I won’t. Say what you mean.”

 

“I mean us.” She doesn’t need to see his face to hear his heart break, she feels it in the energy around them. It’s also in his silence that follows. When that becomes unbearable, she tries to explain, even if a part of her already knows he’ll never understand. “It’s not that I don’t...that I don’t…” She doesn’t say ‘love you’ but he knows that’s what she means. “It’s only that we just got back and Sochi was hard and we’re confused and we don’t know what’ll happen and I just don’t think we should be making any big decisions now.”

“It’s not such a big decision,” he tells her, voice flat as his back falls against his headboard.

“Of course it is,” she argues. “We’ve never been here before, we don’t know what’ll happen to us if we go there.”

“Yes, we do.” He says and there’s no room to disagree. He’s right. But the fact that he’s right is part of the problem.

 

“Yeah, well, then let’s say we do,” she snaps, even though she doesn’t want to. “So we do this for a year and then you’ll wanna get married and have kids and move back here and I’ll be a _housewife_ at twenty-eight!”

“Who said anything about getting married?” He sounds aghast.

“Scott.” And for that she looks at him, with the most “Who are we kidding?”-expression she can manage.

“Who said anything about getting married _any time soon_? Or having children? I’m not ready to have kids either,” he tells her.

“But eventually.”

“Yes, eventually,” he parrots. “Is that such a bad thing to imagine?”

“No.” This is so much more difficult than she imagined. She’s never going to make him see. “But I don’t know if I want it.”

“You’re not sure if you want kids?”

“No.” She takes a deep breath for the worst thing she will ever say to him and the most terrible thing about that is, for once, he has no idea what’s coming. “I’m not sure if I want _you_.”

 

Scott doesn’t say anything. He just gets out of bed and walks to his dresser to take out a sweatshirt. It’s an old light-grey one, he hasn’t worn it in years but she remembers it. He’d used to wear it to the rink a lot, eons ago, back when things had been somewhat simpler between them. Back when they knew everything past friendship they felt for each other belonged firmly on the ice and would never be taken off of there. Because they needed to function as a team, needed to be on the same page, did _not_ need to be in his parents’ house fighting about their future or their feelings for each other. He walks back to the bed without seeing her and puts the sweatshirt down where the bed is still warm from his body.

 

“It’s cold out,” he says toneless. “You should put this on before you get out there.”

“Scott,” she says, as gently as she can but he remains numb. He always does this when things get hard, he just shuts down and expects her to fix everything by herself. “Can’t we just talk about it?”

“What’s there to talk about?” He challenges, finally looking at her again. She can’t stand the hurt and agony painting his eyes a watery dark brown though, not for long. “You don’t want me, you don’t love me. What’s more to know?”

“I didn’t say that,” she insists. “I said I’m not sure. I need...some time. To figure things out, to figure myself out. I don’t even remember life without you, for God’s sake. I just need to get to know myself outside of this, outside of us. So I can be sure.”

“ _I’m_ sure!” He exclaims then and it’s not a shout but it almost is. “I hardly remember my life without you, either. You’re my whole fucking world, Tess and I don’t need to go anywhere else to figure that out. I’m in the same place as you but I _know_ . I fucking know. And if you don’t, then you really _should_ go.”

 

Tessa remains still. The situation has deteriorated so rapidly, she can hardly believe that just a couple of moments ago, they were peacefully asleep beside each other, a team, a whole, one single entity. And now it feels like a pit has opened between them, splitting the ground and leaving them dangling on the edge, drifting away from each other.

“I’m gonna brush my teeth,” he tells her perfunctorily. “You should be packed and ready to go when I get back.”

 

With that he leaves her, the absolute asshole, and Tessa is out of the bed in seconds. Anger fuels her getting ready. Stripping out of the shirt and boxers he gave her to sleep in and back into her jeans and blouse from the party. It’s with great chagrin that she ends up putting his sweatshirt over her head because, darn it, it really is cold, even inside, and she did not bring more than a stupid cardigan to the party. She’d rather not be wearing it. Mostly because it smells like home, like Scott and like skating and his arms holding her and her knowing so surely where she belongs. Now she knows nothing. She gathers her hair up into a knot so furiously, she almost breaks the elastic, rips at her shoelaces and grabs her bag from the ground like it personally attacked her. And then she waits for him, dressed and ready to go as he ordered, foaming at the mouth, ready to tear him into pieces.

 

Her anger dissipates like a shot to the gut when he gets back in and she can see how he strains to hide it but she has known this man for most her life, well enough to see he’s been crying.

“Scott, I-” She tries, she really does. Seeing him like this is crippling.

“Just go.” He says, looking at the floor. “Just go, Tess.”

“We can’t leave it like that,” she says. “We need to be okay. We need to...skate together in a couple of days, we need to practice.”

“For fuck’s sake, T.” Still not looking at her. Still not quite shouting either. “We will skate. We always do. This isn’t about fucking skating. It’s about us. And no matter what you try to tell yourself so you can sleep at night, there’s a lot more to us than _skating_. Or maybe not. Apparently. Apparently all I thought I knew about us is a fucking lie.”

“It’s not. I just, I just need to figure things out for myself,” she tells him, helplessly.

“That’s not good enough,” he says. “You either know or you don’t and if you don’t, then what’s the point?”

“Please, Scott, can’t we just…” She doesn’t even know what to say anymore. “I want us to still be friends.”

 

This time, he winces out loud and it kills her. Finally she understands why that is one of the worst sentences known to mankind. She thinks at him so hard to look at her that when he does, it feels like an accomplishment but she also regrets it instantly.

 

His face is tense but still shaking. Knowing him, he will either combust in a second or start sobbing but to her great surprise, he does neither. Instead, he springs forward and before she knows it or she can do anything to react, his hands are clasping both sides of her head and he kisses her. Hard, demanding, bruising. There is desperation in his urgency but she can’t pause to ponder it because her body goes on auto-pilot, kissing him back like a dying woman, letting him pry her mouth open, too lost in it to escape the sigh she breathes into his open mouth.

It could be hours or seconds before it stops but it does and he’s still holding her when he says: “We’ll be okay. But we’re not _friends_.”

She knows what he means. He’s not saying their friendship is over, she thinks she would possibly die if he said that. But this is dangerous also. Because of course it’s true. Of course they’re not friends, not platonic, not _just_ friends, anyway. Friends is too weak a term at that, any word in any human language is probably too weak a term for what they are. Yet, as it is, it needs to be enough for now. Tessa can’t offer up any new word or label or vocabulary. Maybe she finds it, along the way. But first, she needs to get out there and figure out who she is outside the universe that is Scott. She needs to know who she is to herself before she can know what she wants to be for him.

 

So she leaves, after a long, lingering moment of staring into his eyes, trying to find the strength to go. The strength to believe that she’ll find what she needs. And the hope that he will wait for her. That he’ll still be there when she comes back.  

 

***

 

_You left your kiss like a bruise on my lips_

_Your fingerprints are tattooed on my skin_

_And hush now don’t cry, build your walls high_

_And don’t you dare come creeping in_

 

**May 16, 2014**

He doesn’t wait. He barely waits two weeks. Tessa isn’t even sure it’s him who tells her first or if she hears it somewhere and just tries to ignore the whispers hard enough to forget. The day when he casually drops that he is going on a date, she feels like he’s ripped the ice off under her skates. She hadn’t known. She hadn’t known it was like _this_. Yes, she could see him go on dates, maybe just for retribution or out of spite, she wouldn’t put that past him, but the way he tells her about this new girl, that’s something else. It’s like she doesn’t even exist anymore. Little more than two weeks after he was convinced he would marry her eventually, he tells her after practice that he “met this really cool girl and she’s so smart and funny and interesting” and his face lights up like the fourth of July.

“You’ve met her I think,” he says after she’s gone silent. “She’s on the curling team, Kaitlyn?”

She nods non-comittingly and forces a smile on her face. They don’t talk about what happened that night after his grandparents’ party. They don’t talk much about anything that means something anymore. But she hears about Kaitlyn, whether she wants to or not.

 

“Going to a hockey game tonight,” he texts her right before she goes to the PWC event that has been scheduled for ages and he had once upon a time said he’d come to too. “Gonna see K after, have a great birthday!”

Tessa shoves her phone away and resolves not to look at it for the rest of the night but of course fails spectacularly. He doesn’t text her again though. She knew he wasn’t going to but she is still waiting for it anyway, tucked in bed in total darkness when her birthday is technically already over.

She’s so angry at him she could scream. A month ago he wanted her to have his babies, now he can’t even show up to her birthday? She twists under her blanket, her unease a sheen of cold sweat on her body and she wishes she still had wine around. Or someone to talk to. But of course she hasn’t told anybody. Not even her mother. Scott and her always had that silent agreement that what exactly they were to each other belonged on the ice in their performance and off-ice, only to themselves. And even there, for the longest time, it had gone unacknowledged. They had learned their phrases in media training, about the questions people had about the nature of their relationship and they had stuck to that. Anything more was hinted at in looks or touches or allusions in sparse vulnerable moments. Or at least it had been until that night.

 

But the rule had still remained. What was really going on between Scott and Tessa stayed between Scott and Tessa. Now she’s paying for it. She has no one to turn to, no one to rant to, no one to show his text to and cry and have someone tell her that he’s an idiot and a jerk and that he’ll live to regret choosing some random new girl over Tessa. Tessa who was his everything once upon a time, his ‘whole fucking world’ as he’d put it. His first kiss.

How could he throw that all away? Why could he not have waited for a minute before jumping headfirst into the next thing? Truthfully, she hasn’t gotten any further in her soul-searching, hasn’t figured out yet who she is and if Scott really is who she wants, so she’s not jealous per se, she’s disappointed. She’s hurt. She’s pissed off that he wouldn’t wait for her, that he claimed he loved her so much but he couldn’t even give her a month or two to figure things out.

 

Nope, he had turned right around and…

Tessa lies in her bed and sighs. Her mind is going in circles, catching on the same thing over and over again and she is annoyed with herself. She just wants to sleep. She wants to sleep and be more drunk and to stop thinking about him. She wants to forget the way her stomach still turns when he looks at her, wants to forget how he touched her on the ice just the day before, like she was all that mattered. Doesn’t want to think about how fucked up it was that they skated to “Somebody That You Used To Know” every night and how spectacularly that had hurt even though it was such a silly thing to get worked up about. But she really does feel like somebody that he used to know and that he’d forgotten about her startlingly quick. Poof, moved on, just like that. Like the snap of a finger. Maybe that goes to show her. If she was that easy for him to leave behind and cast aside, maybe he’d been lying all that time. Maybe this is her lesson. She decides that it is and rolls over, resolving to forget all about him and maybe find some date for herself when her phone buzzes on the nightstand. She flips back over mechanically, because late night texts could always mean something bad happened. Or they could be Scott. This time, it’s the latter.

 

“Hope you had fun tonight. Bet you looked like a star,” it reads on her display, the light casting a ghastly shimmer on the room.

“Had a great time, thx,” she hammers back, unsure if she’s happy that he sent this or angry. “Don’t know about the star but was happy. See you Wednesday. xo”

The ‘xo’ was an afterthought really, she hasn’t sent him that since _that_ night but it’s her birthday and he has a new girlfriend so whatever the hell. She doesn’t care anymore.

 

They’re over. They were never on but now they’re over. And on her lips she can still feel the kiss he left her with, still black and blue. That kiss was like a smack in the gut and it feels more like that every day. His hands were revenge even then, his fingertips tattoos of neglected ownership still burned into her skin, his tongue had been punishment, the way he pulled her closer their swan song. They’re done. Not all the way, not as partners, not even as friends. But the part of them that might’ve gotten married two years from now, that part is gone. And she can’t cry about it now. Won’t. Because she’s a grown-up and she has cried too many times over Scott Moir to find any lingering dignity in it and she had damn well made her own bed there. He was a faithless asshole who’d tossed her aside the minute she didn’t dance to his tune anymore but she _had_ pushed him away first. So she won’t cry.

 

She’ll put her armour on and build her castle walls high and she’ll encase the part of her heart that loves him, that’ll always love him, and built something new on top of it. And then she’ll go back to being his friend. And after, she’ll get back out there. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not in a week or even a month. But she’ll get back out there and she’ll be radiant and funny and interesting all on her own. And there’ll be no room for Scott in that new Tessa Virtue. She’ll be all herself. Her very own fortress. And he won’t be welcome there.

 

***

 

_‘Cause you’re the one that I can’t lose_

_You’re the one that I can’t win_

 

**August 28, 2015**

They leave right after the game is called for the Blue Jays. On their way through the thickening crowd to the staff exit, they talk to as many people as the time allows before they’re led to the private staircase by someone from the venue, talking into a walkie-talkie for the entire way.

“We have two taxis for you just outside,” the security guard tells Tessa halfway down and she decides that she has to act now or she’ll lose her nerve.

 

As soon as the heavy back door closes behind Scott and her, leaving them by the deserted athletes and staff entrance of the Rogers Centre, Tessa grabs him by the sleeve. He snaps back around to her like a shot. There’s that look in his eyes again. That look that makes her hopeful, the one that makes her feel guilty whenever she’s seen Kaitlyn lately.

“Do you want to hang out?” She asks him inconspicuously.

“Um, I kinda…,” he starts but then stops himself and looks like he’s making a decision she isn’t following. “Nevermind, yeah, sure. What did you have in mind?”

“Nothing fancy, maybe just clear out the mini bar?” She suggests and he seems happy with that. So without further spectacle, they cancel the second taxi to both get in Tessa’s and off to the hotel they go.

 

It’s easy with him again these days. It’s so easy she hardly notices the time passing between getting in the car and throwing her bag on her bed as he takes off his shoes, putting them diligently next to her own, the way they do when they got dressed in shared changing rooms when at a smaller rink to practice. His jacket goes neatly beside her own on a hanger and he goes beside her on the bed, sitting comfortable with Tessa spreading the contents of her mini bar on the sheet for them to pick apart and share. Bent over the stuff, they haggle over the peanuts like children until he ends up conceding them to her and they feel like themselves again. Which is a blessing because she had come to miss his constant presence in her life like a torn-off limb.

 

“So, I’m gonna need you to down that Vodka,” she tells him cordially after a while of him recapping the game. She passes him the small bottle while taking the Jägermeister one for herself. “We need to talk.”

“I’m scared,” he says but takes it from her anyway, uncapping it without pause probably just because she said so. “What did I do?”

“It’s not so much what you did, more what _I_ want to do,” she says.

“Well, what do you wanna do?”

“Drink the vodka,” she orders and uncaps her own shot. She waits until he holds out his bottle to clink with hers and then downs it in one swoop. It’s gross stuff but at least it’s cold and she needs the liquid courage now, even if technically, they’re somewhat in training and she shouldn’t be drinking.

 

Scott’s face scrunches as he puts the empty bottle down and then growls a little, hissing sharply. “Fucking Russians.”

Tessa can’t help but let out an undignified holler of a laugh, knowing exactly what Russians he’s talking about and then she knows how to start that conversation. “So speaking of Russia.”

“You want to move to Moscow?” He asks, his eyebrows rising into a soft arch and she giggles.

“No.” She pauses, collects her wits and braces herself for her big proposal. “I want to show them,” she says and she can see the cogs start turning in his head slowly but surely. “I want twenty-eighteen. I want to _win_ and I want to show them.”

 

Scott needs a moment to process this but she’s willing to give him the time. If he says ‘no’ because he feels pressured for a quick decision, her whole plan will be in shambles. Her whole grand, big, multi-layered, multi-purpose, very carefully laid out plan. And that would suck pretty bad.

 

It’s not an entirely new concept or even a new line of thinking for them, either: Going back to competing. They had kept touching base on potentially returning to competitive skating time and again but so far had not decided on anything. She knows Scott likes the way things are right now, earning his living with show skating and their partner deals and being free to otherwise do as he pleases. He also likes having the freedom to go out and have a drink with his buddies without worrying about nutrition or getting up at five AM, as by his own admission, and she would always roll her eyes when he referred to the very soft, very small curve of his stomach as his retirement beer-pouch. Yes, he had made his peace with the end of their amateur career a lot more than her and she is well aware.

 

Still, they have strength left in them, more to give, more fire, more willingness to create something. And the hunger to win, they will always want to win, that’s just who they are. Plus –and they would rarely say this out loud in an endless attempt to keep a positive mindset– Sochi still burned in the back of their minds. The anger and humiliation at the blatant underscoredness of their achievement, the backdoor politics and fixing that had gone on behind the scenes–which she had _known_ about, tried to warn him about but he hadn’t listened. The sheer unfairness of it all. It all still stung, it all still made her want to prove to herself and the entire feudaration that Virtue and Moir were not done and that they would not be overlooked and played for fools again.

 

So her plan is clear: get back in the shark tank, have _fun_ with it the way they’d said so many times during their broadcasting stints their peers should (who instead skated with tight faces and perpetual frayed nerves), call up Marie-France and Patrice and tell them to whip them into shape, get back on top where they belong and be too good for any Olympic judge to pass them over for the best score ever again. Tessa’s in the right state of mind to ‘fuck shit up’, as Scott would say. She is starved for victory and _ready._

 

Also, she misses the single-minded focus, the positive stress of the competitive circuit, misses the schedules and the regiment and the fuss and the excitement and she misses, maybe above all, seeing Scott every day from dusk till dawn. She misses sharing a common goal with him and she misses _him_. Which is incidentally where the second part of her great plan comes into play.

 

She doesn’t exactly want to break him and Kaitlyn up, that isn’t the goal. She simply wants to remind Scott of who she and him are. Who they were meant to be and who they’d been meant to be before she had gone and messed it all up. Before _he_ had gone and messed it up even further. If they came back, if they did that together, she thinks they might have a shot at a second chance. Both of them. At the Gold and at each other.

 

Truthfully, the plan isn’t any more concrete than that but it doesn’t need to be. She knows him in and out, knows how they work together, knows from experience that the closer the Games would get, the closer they would come together, the more intimate, the more wrapped up in each other. They were nowhere near that yet but they _would_ get there. If they started now, by 2018 they would be ready. By 2018, they would be… _more._ They could be everything they wanted to be by then.

 

And Tessa, finally, after over a year, after all her life skating with him, knows without a doubt what she wants from her future: To be at the top of the podium in PyeongChang by his side and to call Scott Moir her own in every possible way. He only has to say yes.

 

But looking at him now, she isn’t sure that he will. He looks troubled, brow furrowed and nostrils tight. It’s not panic-inducing yet but it’s not the best look on him. Not for what she wants to hear from him.

“You’re not a fan?” She says preemptively, aiming for breeziness but he isn’t overly receptive.

“Why?” He asks after a moment, as if he hadn’t even heard her.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean _why_ , Tess,” he says. “Why do you wanna come back?”

This is easy. “Because we’re not done yet,” she says. “I know it. We still have more to give, we can still…we can win this thing, I know it. Plus, I miss the regimen, the structure. Don’t you?”

“You haven’t answered my question.” He says calmly, holding her gaze with an intensity he usually reserves for the ice.

“Yes I have,” she says and sounds even to herself like she’s fourteen and argumentative and she’s pretty sure she looks it, too.

“Have you, though?” He asks and leaves her no wiggle room for lies, that much is clear. Suddenly the soft beige carpet beneath her bed is really interesting. And the burgundy details on the curtain, well, they really are something.

“What are you asking?” For a brief moment she wonders if playing dumb is gonna fly with him.

“You know perfectly well.” It doesn’t.

 

If she is honest, she is really caught by surprise by him calling her out on it. She hadn’t expected that, truthfully. But then again, the Scott staring her down like that isn’t the Scott she had said “wait” to a year ago. He has changed, grown, become even more perceptive, even more tuned into her even past all the distance and the difficulties between them that past year. He can see right through her. And also, since he seems very adamant on getting her to say the words, this must have been on his mind as well. Maybe even longer than she suspected.

“You’re asking if it’s about more than just the skating,” she says then, to buy time and in part honestly to clarify. He just nods, eyes tracing her face, looking for something bare. She doesn’t want to make it this hard for him this time. She is done with the games.

So she says: “When has it ever been just about the skating with us?”

“I don’t know,” he tells her and glances off for a second, his jaw clenching and unclenching on a breath. “Not for a very long time.” And there it is. The heart of the matter. It’s never been about _just_ anything with them. It’s everything, all of it, all the time, him asking her to confirm is really superfluous, because he must know now, he must.

“So, is it?” He asks anyway.

 

“Scott, you have someone,” Tessa says, her way of answering his question. “You’re in a relationship and…and Kaitlyn is really wonderful. I’m not going to…I don’t want to…”

“What?” Scott cuts her off, if gently. He turns his body even further to her, opening his arms as if to welcome her in but merely shrugs, raising his palms to the ceiling. “Come between that? You’re _always_ between that. No trying needed on your part either.”

"Let’s not…maybe let’s not get into this now?” Tessa tries, scared that he’ll say something horrible next, about how he doesn’t want her in his life anymore to ruin all his relationships. “Let’s just decide if we want to do it or not, if we wanna come back.”

“I can’t,” he says and for a second her heart breaks. If he sees, he gives no indication of it, he simply keeps on talking, looking sternly at her. “And you can’t do that either, Tessa. We can’t just waltz back into all that and not have this conversation.”

 

 _Oh_ , so that’s what that’s about. “Well, what do you want me to say?”

“I’d take the truth.” He shrugs but his eyes aren’t a third as casual as his movements.

“The truth is…the truth is…,” she says after taxing him for a while, taxing the situation and landing on the fact that she has nowhere to go but forward. Her future is on the line here in more than one way and so why bother trying to conceal anything? Why bother with him anyway, he can read her lies on the tip of her tongue and the curl of her lashes. “I made a mistake. Last year. And I miss you. I miss _us_ . I think–,” a pause. A plea, next: “I think we should have another shot. A second chance. Not just at the Gold but, _you know…_ ”

 

There is a moment where Scott’s face splits into something new and old at the same time. It’s elation and wonder and fascination. A joy that touches the deepest, mostly tightly guarded places in her but it’s gone as fast as it appeared on his features, fast replaced with scepticism, a wary sense of distrust somewhere hidden behind the soft brown hues of his eyes.

“Are you sure?” He asks gravely, and she knows this is what’s below everything for him. This is his condition. This is Scott, as honest as he’s ever been in words with her. “Because I can’t go through that again, T. I can’t _almost have you_ for the next three years and then you change your mind. I won’t survive that. It’s yes or no on the rest of it with me.” The rest of their lives, the rest of their future together. “You don’t need to say yes, you don’t owe me anything. But I _need_ to know. And if you’re in, I need you to be in. For good.”

 

If she had a lot of time to ponder it, she would see the humor in the fact that a year ago, she had panicked and ran for the woods at the prospect of Scott proposing to her in a year’s time and now that he basically has if you break it down, she feels no fear, only certainty. In a way, it’d all happened how she’d foreseen it. Only the way there was different and now they’re potentially looking at another Olympics, not settling down. Still, Tessa muses for just the briefest of moments that that would be okay too, that Scott would never be happy trapping her into a tranquil housewife-life and that she had been an idiot to assume so all those months ago.

Even if they never went back to competitive ice, she would still want to end up with him. It’s almost ridiculous that it’s taken her this long to realise that.

But now that she has, it’s the easiest thing to smile at him, smile with her whole heart, take his hand in hers softly and say: “I’m in.”

There is a moment of suspension that passes between them, something said only in a look and the squeeze of his hand which can’t be put into words. It’s a promise of a kind and they both hear it loud and clear.

“Then so am I,” Scott says and before he can do anything else, Tessa kisses him.

 

Considering how many times in the past months she has thought about doing this, she should really be considered tame but obviously Scott doesn’t agree. After endless minutes of practically crawling into his lap, kissing into his open mouth and then moving diligently to his neck, straddling and grinding against him but just before she can get his shirt off of his back, he stops her. There’s not much force behind it but it’s a definite pause. He’s still breathless when he speaks, his cheeks flushed, lips puffy and eyes dazed. He looks ready to ravish her but he doesn’t. Instead he strokes along her arms, winding her down and grounding them to each other.

 

“Let’s breathe for a sec, babe,” he tells her, almost whispering, the endearment novel for Tessa to hear directed at her. He’d always reserved that for his girlfriends. And so there’s that then. Seems like he’s been waiting to call her that for a little while. “There’s no rush. We’ve got time. We’ve got so much time.” A smile and then it’s gone, replaced by an apology: “Plus I kinda need to go.”

“What?” The hand that had snaked into his hair stills.

“Kaitlyn. I was supposed to see her tonight,” he tells her and sort-of shrugs. “And I better get going.”

Tessa, climbing down from him a little less gracefully than she’d hoped, gives him a look and he wobbles his head, wincing a little: "I just think I should break up with her in person.”

 

Like a shot, Tessa’s face curls into a mask of guilt. Yes, she’s wanted this but not so much at the expense of someone else’s happiness. He catches her expression first and then her cheek in his palm next.

“Hey,” he says softly. “It’s alright. There was never a competition anyway. It’s always been you. Whenever you’d have said the word, this would’ve happened.”

He kisses her forehead then, soft like a feather and gathers his things as she watches. At the door he lingers for a moment and looks at her again. “I mean it, we have time. Let’s not rush anything. Let’s just…go slow. I wanna do it right this time.”

She can only nod and watch him leave. Somehow it’s not that bad now, because she knows he’ll be back. And when he is, it’ll be to stay.

 

***

 

_And I hate you and I love you_

_And I wish you’d go away_

_And I hate you and I love you_

_And I wish that you would stay_

 

**June 12, 2015**

It’s ridiculously late. It’s so late, it’s early. And Tessa should really be in bed. But she knows she can’t sleep, knows she won’t be able to for hours, so she has decided to not even try and take a walk on the beach instead, straight from getting back from the bar. It’s cold and damp out and the wind is blowing her hair in every possible direction but she doesn’t really mind. She is too buzzed on wine and something else, something way more dangerous.

 

This trip had been messy so far. Not necessarily in a bad way but messy still. Watching Scott with Kaitlyn is as difficult as ever but it’s also nothing she isn’t used to by now, plus in the last couple of days Scott had spent a generous amount of time away from everybody doing God knows what and so _that_ really could be worse. Plus the other people on the trip are a wild, intriguing mix and Tessa socialises to take her mind off of everything but it still remains a weird situation. None of it seems really real, not the guys wearing kilts, not the girls acting like a band of sorority sisters and not Scott over breakfast, having a cup of coffee ready for her within minutes of her arrival at the hall, as if he always knew when she was going to come down.

 

He always puts it on the free place beside him. Left or right, wherever Kaitlyn does not sit that morning. It’s his way of showing Tessa he wants her around and another to show Kaitlyn that he won’t ever exclude his skating partner from his life (even if maybe there are moments that he really, really should). Tessa and Kaitlyn go along with it, smiling through what they both sense is weird. In general, they do a lot of smiling through Scott’s weirdness but what sets the two of them apart is that Kaitlyn has no idea what’s going on, whereas Tessa feels in her bones what is happening. Scott’s trying to navigate them again. And he hasn’t done that in a very long time. A part of her is so relieved because she had thought for a moment there that they would never find their way back to that place again, but now here they are.

 

This is what it has always been like, before. They had this complicated, unique, huge relationship and besides trying to keep strengthening and perfecting it between themselves, it always had come with an equal amount of working it in smoothly with the rest of their lives and other relationships. With varying degrees of success. It was seamless with their families for the most part, simply because Tessa was part of Scott’s family as well as Scott was part of hers. But with friends and significant others it had always been more of a task and always harder for Scott because he was the one who really had meaningful relationships outside of their partnership.

 

People don’t understand the bond they have, the core-deep trust fought for with stubborn determination for years and years, the decade-plus of experiencing the whirlwinds of world-class skating, the sheer number of hours spent together. Nobody can really match up to that. Not even romantically, that’s not even part of the equation there and hadn’t been for the longest time. What they have together is not normal and it’s practically unfathomable for outsiders. It means that they know what the other is thinking by the squeeze of a hand or the faint touch of an elbow. It means connecting through a room full of people, locking eyes and reading each other’s minds. Which was what had happened at that bar tonight and had Tessa spiralling more than a little.

 

He’d sat with Kaitlyn, a table over and when the song started, it took three lines for them to find each other. It’d been a beautiful, stripped down acoustic version of “What’s love got to do with it” and she had looked at Scott, listened to the lyrics and read in his eyes the same recognition that passed through hers. And then the next thought hit them at the same time: “We have to skate to this”. She nodded at him and he’d smiled slightly, neglecting his hold on Kaitlyn’s shoulder to take a sip from his beer. It might’ve been that his girlfriend saw the exchange but Tessa would never know for sure. In that moment she only saw Scott. “Who needs a heart, when a heart can be broken?”

 

She ponders this when her phone goes off in her jacket and she picks up immediately because it’s late and it might be important.

“Tessa, geez, kiddo, where are you?” Scott says when she’s hardly said his name into the speaker. “You’re not in your room.”

“I went for a walk on the beach, I’m not far,” she tells him.

“Who takes a walk in the middle of the night?” He asks.

“Restless sleepers,” she reminds him.

“Stay where you are, okay?”

“What are you gonna do?” She asks dimly, because surely he can’t mean to join her at this ungodly hour while his girlfriend is sleeping in their room, Tessa presumes. But then again, this is Scott and _of course_ he can.

“Walk with you, genius.” He says. “I’m restless, too.”

 

With that he hangs up and leaves Tessa to mindlessly stroll back closer to the hotel perched up on the cliff. It isn’t long at all until a slender silhouette appears at the top of the stairs and soon blends into the rocky pathway until he’s down with her, hair a soft mess and nose red from the cold.

“You’re gonna get sick,” she tells him once he’s close enough to hear her over the softly lapping waves. His face looks pale in the moonlight, pale and beautiful. “You should be in bed.”

“Ditto.” He gets closer. “So that song, eh?”

“Yeah, I already have some steps in mind,” she grins, happy to feel normal with him for once.

“Of course you do,” he grins back and then, in a heartbeat, he’s closed the distance between them and has her in a dance hold.

“What are you doing?”

“Show me,” he says and squeezes her hand and it’s silly and stupid but she can’t help but chuckle.

“There’s no music,” she says, shaking her head.

“What’s love,” he starts singing in his silly falsetto voice and starts swaying. “What’s love more than a second hand-emotion?”

He takes the lead even though he’d wanted her to show him but she doesn’t mind. For as long as Scott can remember lyrics or repeat the chorus, he spins her in circles, spins her under his arm and the stars catch in his eyes when they meet hers.

 

How much she’s missed this. Just being with him the way they were, goofy and loose, doing things just for the fun of it, just because they’re them and they’ve always done this. Just for the fun of standing on a beach in Scotland with him in the dead of night, dancing to his soft, raspy singing and not thinking about anybody but themselves. And when he dips her once he decides they’re done and holds her somewhere in the air between his lips and the cold ground, she is sure of exactly two things in the world. One, she hates him and his stupid blissed out face (how he looks at her like hers is the only face he’ll ever have to see again) and she wishes he’d go away and two, she loves him and she wishes he’d stay like this with her forever. It’s not a promise that he will yet, far from it because Kaitlyn is still who she is to him and no one can really promise Tessa that this will change. But the way she feels in Scott’s arms, the way he looks at her, she thinks it might just be okay to start hoping again.

 

***

 

_We are meant to be_

_Beautifully unfinished_

 

**February 20, 2018**

Tessa’s body is an electric wire, sizzling and dancing, and she can still hear the roar of the crowd echoing in her ear when she darts into the deserted flower girls’ changing room. She still can’t believe it. Except she can. They have worked so very hard at this, so very, very hard and they’d put their bodies and minds through hell to be better than second, to be undeniable and unstoppable. They had known there was another fix-up already in place and set against them but they had skated so well, it’d been impossible to not give them what they deserved. She might never stop the happy tears she’s crying. A moment after her, Scott crashes into the room, slams the door and then gathers her up in his arms, squeezing so tightly and her squeezing so tightly back. When he lets go, they jump around for a bit like children to a chorus of “We did it, we did it, we did it” and she is laughing and crying and then he’s on her, kissing her face, her lips, her cheek and her lips again, wild and bruising but in the best way.

 

“I’m so proud of you,” he says in a brief break between renewed attentions. “I love you so much,” in another. “You were so amazing out there,” in the next. And then Tessa comes to and starts getting worried that someone might barge in and see them like this, which is so not business-partner-like. “Business Partners” is their new go-to answer for when someone asks what exactly they are. It’s not a lie but it’s also not even starting to cover the truth. They are everything, everything at all. And now they’re the most decorated ice dancers in Olympic history as well.

 

“Patch is guarding the door,” Scott says once he notices her looking over his shoulder and she has to laugh at that. Of course Patrice would.

“We have a minute,” Scott tells her. “So I can thank you, for all your hard work and for putting up with me for twenty years and for…for..”

She knows what he wants to say, so she finishes the sentence for him: “- loving you.”

“Yes, that,” he mutters on a smile, pressing his forehead to hers. “And _everything_.”

“Thank you,” she says and her heart is full enough to burst. “I am so happy I got to live the last twenty years by your side, even the dark times. You know that don’t you?”

“I’m starting to.”

“Good.”

 

They’re not perfect, nothing is. But they strive for excellence every day. And it turns out that the thing that got them closest to that was finally breaking the rule of not being with your skating partner off the ice. Now, being partners in life had worked out pretty well for them, considering. And Tessa has no idea what the future holds, no plan beyond July of that year but she doesn’t mind at all, because Scott will be there figuring it out with her, every step of the way. She tells him she loves him again and he says it back to her and for a moment, like it does on the ice, the rest of the universe fades away, leaving only them. Only them and their story, their big, long, wondrous, tumultuous story that is only just beginning.

 

Tessa grins, strokes his face before kissing him once more, already excited for the next chapter of their life to start and by now, it’s the most wonderful reassurance that they are what they’ve always been: _Beautifully Unfinished._


End file.
